I'm not entirely sure that specifically raising children to be 'smart' is such a good thing. I was 'above average'(IMHO) or 'Very Bright'(Teachers) as a child, but in comparison to the dullards I was placed with in Australian public education system, I would shine with minimal effort. As a person, I think I can accomplish anything I want, short of bio limits like winning Tour De France I think the world is open to me.
When I attempt a new task I almost always without fail pull it off successfully from building a house, to becoming a triathlete to designing a multi platform, multi api 3d game. I'm now programming automated FX trading systems. I don't however think that most of these things were possible because I'm smart, rather it's just because I believe that I'm not limited by anything except myself. Having the personal resolve to believe that no problem or challenge can stand in your way permanently is far more important that being smart though IMHO.
Despite all of this, I think the real winners in life are those ignorant and contented dullards who accept their 'limitations' without question and are often genuinely happy. I known many of these people and they have become my best friends.
So for me personally, as recent parent of a boy and girl I question whether pushing my children to achieve academically is a good plan. I'm putting them in an Elite school but with only the expectation that they won't completely waste their time there. The most important thing I was never taught was solid financial management. Having that negates the requirement for having a to be smarter to get paid more freeing you up to have fun and be happier or perhaps not even 'have' to work at all.

An anonymous reader writes: Virgin America's new in-flight entertainment system "Red," is actually a gigantic sociological experiment in airborne distributed computing. The plane is full of networked, Linux-based computers each of the seat backs of the A319 and A320 jets. Each of the 149 seats will come with a 9-inch touch-sensitive display, a keyboard that can be removed from the armrest, a 110-volt outlet, an Ethernet jack, and a U.S.B. port. Made for watching movies, listening to MP3's and even order food but for a geek returning from a Black Hat conference it is wonderland. Virgin official are aware of the security threat, and say that they have a code of conduct and that they will just have to see what happens. Maybe they will have a flight Cyber Marshall.

Looking for a new way to use FairUse4WM? Have a Netflix account? If so, go on and roll your sleeves up, as a crafty (and acrimonious) fellow has managed to find a workaround that enables you to not only decrypt the DRM-laced "Watch Now" movie files, but save them to your hard drive for future viewing. Admittedly, the process is somewhere between painless and potentially frustrating, but the gist of it involves Windows Media Player 11, FairUse4WM, Notepad, a Netflix account, and a broadband connection. Through a series of hoop jumping, users can now strip the "Watch Now" files free of DRM and watch them at their leisure and on any video-playing device they choose. Granted, there's certainly issues of legality mixed in here, but where there's a will, there's a way. [Warning: Read link language potentially NSFW]

Chinese authorities have long viewed "internet addiction" as a real problem for the country's youth, even though some research says that in and of itself, internet addiction isn't really a clinical disorder. The government classifies 13 percent of the country's 20 million internet users under 20 as addicts, and it's tried some radical approaches to "curing" them, such as shock therapy and detox units with electric acupuncture and drugs. It's also tried some other, less invasive, ways to get kids offline, by limiting net cafes and forcing game companies to cut back the points games award after certain periods of time. The problem with all of these methods, though, is that they only seek to stop people from spending a lot of time online; they don't attempt to do anything about the underlying reasons and problems causing them to want to do so. When a halfway house for young internet addicts was opened in China, their first visitor was a 17-year-old with some problems at home, so he talked to a psychologist and the house's staff went to his house to talk with him and his parents. It seemed like the kid was going online as a means of avoiding or dealing with the issues in his home life, and fixing those issues is where the focus should be, not on trying to keep him offline through aversion therapy. It now looks like this message might be starting to sink in, as word comes that authorities in China are opening an experimental summer camp for 40 supposedly net-addicted kids, where they'll be treated for depression and other underlying issues that could be prompting them to spend inordinate amounts of time online. So-called internet addiction, in many cases, isn't an ailment, but just a symptom of some deeper problem. Working to solve that problem is the real solution, rather than the band-aid approach of "curing" the addiction. Link to Original Source

Rob writes: Search giant Google has promised not to use its patent portfolio against the Linux
operating system and other open source projects by becoming the first end-user licensee of
the Open Invention Network. By joining the OIN Google has licensed over 100 patents from
the non-profit organization, which was formed in November 2005 by IBM, Novell, Red Hat,
Sony and Phillips to stockpile intellectual property for use as a defensive weapon.
"Linux plays a vital role at Google, and we're strongly committed to supporting the
Linux developer community," noted
the company's open source programs manager, Chris DiBona.

Green is the new black, it would seem. With many organisations now trying to "out-green" the competition, we are rapidly running into the problem seen with the majority of bandwagons - just how real are some of the arguments coming in from the vendors on the topic?

dhavleak writes: "John Pilger (a reputed investigative journalist and documentary film maker who acted as a war correspondent in conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh and Bahrain) recently gave a stirring speech at the Socialism 2007 conference in Chicago. The speech is a startling reminder of how mainstream journalism is just an extension of government, and it encourages people to keep reading between the lines to see the concealed role of the media. From the transcript:

Real information, subversive information, remains the most potent power of all — and I believe that we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public. That wasn't true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia and it isn't true of the United States.

and..

We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by the British secret intelligence service MI-6. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these stories were fake. But that's not the point. The point is that the work of MI-6 was unnecessary, because professional journalism on its own would have produced the same result.

countach44 writes: Gigabyte Technology, one of the largest motherboard manufacturers in Taiwan, hosted a factory tour at its facility, inviting journalists out to give them a brief overview of the company and explain how their factory worked.Link to Original Source